New Year's Resoloutions

Some people don't like New Year's resolutions and think they don't work, but I've had a pretty good track record of keeping mine. I usually keep at least a couple of them. I read that writing them down and then not looking at them helps, and that's worked for me before. I also tried writing them down where I could see them every day. I also don't count New Year's Day. I see the whole holiday season as a kind of time for being decadent and careless while the days are like 5 minutes long and you aren't going to get anything done anyway. The sun went down at 5:01 today. YUCK! I hate winter.

So here goes not in any particular order:
1. Learn Surfcam, believe it or not, that's a career thing
2. Practice my pop ups every day.
3. (I did not keep this one last year, so I'm altering it to be more realistic this year): resume out of water surf training at least 3 times a week. Its funny how it was so much easier to be disciplined about that when I first started surfing than it is now.
4. Do Beth Terry's "Show us your Plastic Challenge" one week a month.

Instead of the usual "eat healthier-loose weight-save money" trifecta I've come up with a plan. When I lost my ATM card and had to live on only cash I realized what I already knew which was that I spend too much money on snack-fast-junk food, and the way to keep me from doing that is to not have money to waste on it. Since I do the bulk of my grocery shopping at the Farmer's Market on Saturday, most of the food I buy for myself is pretty healthy. If I don't have access to anything else, that's all I will eat. The plan is to give myself a cash allowance each week and keep my debit card out of my wallet so I can't buy junk food without having to pay cash for it. I'm making the allowance bigger than my old "Food Budget" that I kept mentally but didn't actually stick to so that my "Fun Money" and my "Food Money" are now one amount. That way if I want to go to the movies at the end of the week or buy a new outfit, I'll have to stick with beet chips and hummus and celery and peanut butter instead of sneaking out for a burger to temporarily cheer myself up for whatever reason. This totally worked when I lost my debit card but wanted a new dress for my company's holiday party, so I know I can make it work on a regular basis. The trick is that I'm going to do it in one week chunks.